Working the Kill Zone: An American Mercenary in Iraq

By William Craun

Alex is a former US Army Ranger who signs up with private military companies to work government contracts in the war zone. His antagonist, Haider, is a humble Iraqi engineer who has been out of work for a year when he is recruited to make bombs for the fledgling Islamic State. Run the most dangerous roads on earth and kick

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koehler Books
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646633463

William Craun

William Craun was a US Army Airborne Ranger. Then, for fifteen years he worked in Iraq and Afghanistan for private military companies (Custer Battles, Triple Canopy, Blackwater, MVM, Patriot Group International, and EODT) on contracts for the DOS, DOD, CIA, and NSA. He received a master's degree in history but passed on the PhD when his professors told him it was too soon to write about Iraq. He went back to war and wrote this novel instead. His other published works are not available for public consumption but may be requested from the CIA and DOS through the FOI Act.

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Prologue

IN MARCH 2003, AMERICA launched a crushing ground assault on the Iraqi Armed Forces of Saddam Hussein. Within twenty-one days, Hussein’s government was out of business, and all the major cities in Iraq were under the control of American allied forces. By May, President George W. Bush declared an end of major combat operations with his mission accomplished speech, and then he proceeded to withdraw the bulk of the American forces from Iraq. The expectation, according to Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was that hopefully, the Iraqi people will throw down their weapons and greet us with open arms.

They were both wrong.

Initial Iraqi euphoria wore off as expected jobs and basic life necessities were not forthcoming to the Iraqi people. The former military, the Sunni Muslim Fedayeen and Ba’ath Party loyalists, were disenfranchised by the coalition government. Shi’ite Muslims saw the opportunity to assert themselves after decades of repression. Most ominously, Islamic doctrine demanded that the invader be expelled: Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove you, for such a test of your Islamic faith is worse than death and killing. . . . Kill them. Such is the penalty for those who deny the true faith (Koran 2:191).

Occasional acts of violent resistance by indigenous insurgents gradually turned into swirling chaos. Foreign jihadists flooded into the country; Shi’ites and Sunnis viciously tore into one another, seeking revenge and vying for control; both sects targeted the Iraqi and coalition security forces; criminal elements took advantage of the lack of security; neighborhoods invaded each other . . . and everybody blamed America for all of their problems.

Mortars, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire, suicide bombers, car bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes, raids, snipers, assassinations, kidnappings, beheadings, and more insanity all became part of daily life in Iraq. The American military had too few troops on the ground to secure even its own lines of communications, let alone stem the rising tide of violence throughout the country. Supply convoys from Turkey and Kuwait were attacked numerous times on a single trip, car bombs repeatedly hit practically every entry point to every compound, terrorists controlled much of the countryside and many of the cities, and the twenty-minute drive from the Baghdad airport to the US Embassy was impossible to make without casualties. The country was burning out of control, and death was the order of the day.

Into the void stepped private military companies and an army of independent security contractors. If you had the training, the guts, and were willing to pull a trigger when needed, there was good money to be made in the deadliest place on earth . . . working the kill zone.

Map of Iraq

CHAPTER 1

Gun Runners in the Triangle of Death

Baghdad, Iraq 2004

ALEX DREAMED OF BEING a soldier from his earliest recollections. His father, his hero, was a veteran of three foreign wars, and Alex wanted more than anything to follow in his giant footsteps. When Alex was a young man his father asked him if he wanted to be a Ranger.

Alex replied, "What do they do?"

His father looked at him like he knew all the secrets of life and said, They run around in the woods and do all the really cool stuff.

Yeah, Dad, I’d like that was probably the most naïve thing he ever said.

A month into Ranger School, Alex thought about his father as he poured the blood from his blisters out of his boots and peeled the loose meat off his feet and toes. He quickly pasted strips of moleskin on the new blisters that had developed on top of the old ones, pulled on his driest socks, and tugged the boots painfully back onto his feet.

In the darkness, someone whispered, Ruck up, and the Ranger patrol rose to move out again. Alex heaved the heavy rucksack onto his aching shoulders and grabbed his rifle. His legs trembled under the weight of all the extra ammunition, water, and special equipment they made him carry. He had not eaten for over two days because they had missed their resupply, and it had been weeks since he had a proper meal. It had also been weeks since he had slept more than a few precious minutes at a time. Every exhausted fiber in his body screamed out for nourishment and rest.

Suddenly an RI, or Ranger instructor, pushed past Alex and inadvertently stepped on a Ranger candidate who had fallen asleep and failed to get up. When the RI realized what was going on, he kicked the man in the stomach with a combat boot and yelled, "You worthless fucking piece of shit! You’ll get all your Ranger Buddies killed!"

The man tried to get up, and the RI pushed him to the ground again.

Now you can get all the sleep you want ’cuz you’re done here! Work your way downhill to the road and wait there for the slug truck to pick you up and take your sorry ass back to the crib! Alex heard rather than saw the former Ranger candidate as he stumbled away from the patrol and went crashing and sliding down the side of the mountain; the ordeal was over for him.

Alex struggled to keep up in the dark. Thanks, Dad. You really hooked me up. I’ll bet you’re laughing your ass off right about now.

Ten years later Alex was himself a grizzled veteran of violent conflicts and war across the globe. Along the way he had become an officer, a captain, and distinguished himself as a warrior and a leader.

He had also married. Initially his wife was okay with his constant and often unannounced deployments, but when she gave birth to their daughter, Jackie, she began pestering him to get a normal job and to be a proper father. With feelings of guilt and fatherly responsibilities, Alex left the Army and accepted an offer to make some serious money with an investment brokerage firm.

At first the money and lifestyle were rewarding, but Alex had issues with normal life and civilians in general. He didn’t suffer from PTSD or anything like that, but he found most conversations with people shallow and meaningless. Moreover, he had little interest in making friends with anyone who had not sacrificed for their liberty in some way.

His wife intensified her henpecking.

When the US invaded Iraq and the call went out for former special operations men who would work in the combat zone for good pay, he jumped at the opportunity. Alex blasted his resume out to several private military companies (PMCs) that he knew were doing business in Iraq, and he signed up with the first one that said yes.

His wife left him.

From his window seat on the left side of the Boeing 707, Alex surveyed the lunar landscape 30,000 feet below. Along their flight path, for hundreds of miles from Beirut to Baghdad, the only distinguishing features were gigantic ripples in the sun-scorched earth that spoke of long-dead rivers and ancient flash floods cutting through the sand to be swallowed up by the thirsty desert.

Alex wondered how many armies had marched through this desolate land. He looked south and imagined swarms of Egyptian chariots making a dark smudge on the earth below as they attacked the Kadesh in the first recorded battle in human history. He could see the land through which Alexander the Great led his Greek army against the vastly superior Persian Empire. How many Roman and Byzantine legions had marched down the dusty trails below? How many empires had been made and broken in this land? Mohammed himself, Crusaders, the Mongols, the Turks, the Germans, the English, and many more. How many people had died here for the imperial ambitions of others? He wondered if his bones would join those of the adventurers of millennia past.

As the plane passed over the Euphrates River and neared Baghdad, Alex had second thoughts. This was his first foray into the cauldron without being part of the US Army and all its assets.

The assessment program his new company had put him through was sketchy at best. At first, he thought that it was just a short refresher course for experienced operators, but in the end, he realized that many of the men invited lacked any significant operational experience. The criteria for acceptance seemed to be if a man was breathing, walking, and willing to pull a trigger, he was good to go. However, the company had presented a picture of professionalism and operational competence on the ground in Iraq, and Alex had accepted their offer—yet another monumentally naïve decision.

The company was created by and staffed with ex-Special Forces and Ranger operators. They explained their US government contracts as a mix of static security, mobile bodyguard (or personal security detail, i.e. PSD), and convoy security. They told Alex’s class that they were selected for PSD and would be equipped with state-of-the-art equipment—from weapons, communications, and medical, to fully armored vehicles, air assets, Big Army support, etc.

During the training, Alex had naturally gravitated toward a couple of experienced operators, one of whom sat next to him now and went by the call sign Predator. They struck up a friendship after selection while they waited at home for the call to deploy that seemed as if it would never come. Predator was an extra-large all-American from the Midwest with a shock of blond hair and a short, well-trimmed beard. He cut his teeth in 10th Special Forces Group in the Pacific, hunting down Philippine jihadists and Southeast Asian drug cartels. Over countless beers, he and Alex determined that they had supported each other on operations from time to time without ever coming into direct contact with one another.

Alex’s four-year-old daughter, Jackie, absolutely doted on Predator. When she saw him, she would fling herself into the air, fully trusting him to catch her, and then wrap her arms around his neck and smother his face with kisses. He played with her and chased her around and made her squeal with delight. One night he woke up with a flashlight shining in his eyes. Little Jackie told him, I thought there was a gwizzly bear in your room! I came to help you!

Alex felt the plane descending as they neared the outskirts of the city of Baghdad. The pilot put on the fasten-seatbelts sign, and his Australian accent boomed over the intercom: Buckle up and hang on, mates! Barf bags are in the pocket in front of you. I suggest you pull one out and keep it in your hand! Alex noticed that the crew fastened themselves into their seats not with seat belts but with shoulder harnesses. He looked out the window again and thought he could see the Baghdad International Airport almost directly below them.

Suddenly the plane lost power and began dropping fast. Alex felt his stomach lift to his mouth and barely kept it down. He gripped the armrests and tensed his legs as his whole body tried to lift out of the seat. Then he felt the pilot give the bird some juice, and his stomach settled down a bit. Suddenly, the pilot cut the power again and tilted the plane hard left. All manner of conflicting feelings and physical reactions coursed through Alex’s body as the pilot spiraled the plane down toward the ground. The engines revved with tremendous noise as the pilot gave them fuel to stabilize his descent, and then he cut the power again. He repeated the process over and over as the plane plummeted to earth.

Alex looked around the cabin and saw big, strong men unnaturally pale with death grips on their armrests and some with their faces buried in their little paper bags. He recognized that this was an evasive measure to avoid getting shot from the ground, but nobody had warned them. He looked at the interior structure of the commercial plane and said to Predator, Surely this thing isn’t made for this kind of stress. I wonder how many times this lunatic pilot has done this.

No answer. Alex looked at Predator; his eyes were bulging and fixed directly on the seat to his front, and his knuckles were white from gripping the armrests. Alex snickered.

Hey, man, are you still alive? You might want to breathe a little. I’ll bet you’re not real keen on rollercoasters either, are you?

Predator gasped for air. Fuck you, man. This ain’t natural. It’s not right. I can’t fight back. I’m at someone else’s mercy.

Alex laughed and mimicked a small voice while wiggling his fingers at Predator: And we’re all gonna die.

Predator snapped his head around and glared at Alex for a moment, and then his eyes darted back to the seat in front of him and he gripped his chair tighter. And if we don’t die, I’m gonna beat your ass.

With that thought, Alex braved looking out his window again. He saw the tarmac clearly as the plane spiraled to the left toward the ground at a dizzying speed; everything else was a blur as his senses went into overdrive. He glanced out the windows on the right side and saw only the sky. With his stomach objecting, he looked back at the rapidly approaching tarmac and then could not tear his eyes away. He muttered to himself, I wonder if this is what it feels like when your parachute doesn’t open, and you burn in.

This time Predator answered him: Asshole.

Alex watched, mesmerized by his impending doom and helpless to do anything about it. He felt no panic or apprehension, only resignation and morbid fascination that he was able to watch it so clearly. Right at the point where Alex thought he was going to actually see the left wing impact the runway and shear away, a heartbeat before the plane slammed into the ground and burst into flames, the pilot applied power, jerked the plane to the right, level with the runway, and touched down like a feather.

Alex emerged from the plane at Baghdad International Airport into an oppressive heat magnified by the black tarmac. He looked around and saw a twenty-foot wall made of giant concrete Jersey barriers, called T-walls, encircling the entire airport. The plane had parked away from the terminal, which between the invasion and neglect had clearly seen better days. Burmese contractors—Gurkhas sporting AK-47s and wearing blue polo shirts and boonie caps emblazoned with their company logo—herded the passengers along the boiling-hot tarmac and into the terminal.

After they finished with their bags, customs, and immigration, they were met by a company man who introduced himself as Alien. Alien was a former Force Recon Marine who said he came over purely for the money, but Alex would soon find out that he was a selfless operator who was a consummate professional and naturally thought of others first. He was from New York and looked and moved like an NFL middle linebacker. He was a wealth of information and promised to help them get settled.

The company compound was just off the airport tarmac but still inside the big wall that surrounded the airport. It looked like a run-down trailer park. Lacking a perimeter wall of its own, the outer ring of the compound was a junkyard of vehicles and a few garage-size buildings made from scrap plywood and tin. Several mechanics in greasy coveralls labored in the sweltering heat to fix the company vehicles. Alex pointed at them and said, "I wonder how much they get paid."

Alien offered, "Not enough, for sure. I met a guy who told me he drives supply semis from here to the Green Zone on Route Irish for three grand a month. I said, ‘You do what? For how much? Are you crazy?’ I just wanted to get away from him; I hate talking to dead people."

Most of the trashed vehicles appeared to be unarmored, and many displayed the telltale signs of aggressive driving, roadside bombs or IEDs, and small-arms fire. A few were just twisted and charred remains speaking of a particularly violent and fiery demise.

He craned his neck back to see two mechanics welding a steel box with no top into the back of a Ford F350 pickup truck.

As they pulled into the center of the compound, Alex found himself surrounded by a maze of forty-foot-long sea-land, or Conex, boxes converted into living and workspaces. Iraqis milled about everywhere. Alien saw him eyeballing the Iraqis and nodded toward them as he parked the vehicle.

They’re Kurdish Peshmerga. The name means ‘One who confronts death.’ Their ancestors have been fighting for autonomy here for thousands of years. No one attempted to exit the vehicle. This was new to all of them. "Over time, and depending on who has ruled over them, they’ve oscillated between being a guerilla group to something like the Mafia, to the official military of Kurdistan, and back to being guerillas. The Turks call them terrorists, and we call them allies.

We kind of screwed them after the First Gulf War by letting Saddam fly aircraft and gas the hell out of their cities. But we helped them in the end, and they appreciate that and are more than willing to fight for us. They understand that without our help they’ll be alone again, and the Arabs and Turks will try to kill them all, down to the last child. One thing’s for sure: after thirty-five years of persecution under Saddam, they would work for us for free just for some payback. There are no better men to have with you in a firefight; they’ll be there with you when you need them.

With that, he stepped out of the truck, and they followed him into a trailer with Operations Center stenciled on the door.

The next morning found Alex in the back seat of an unarmored Ford F350 pickup truck with Kurdish mercenaries, wondering if he hadn’t made a huge mistake. This is not what they told me I’d be doing when we were in the States.

The last words of the operations manager at the mission brief this morning had been Don’t expect any help from Big Army, probably not even medevac. If anyone gets within a hundred meters of the convoy, shoot them. And remember! He raised his hand. What happens on the road stays on the road! Good luck.

The four gun trucks made their way around the tarmac of the Baghdad International Airport, or BIAP, toward the compound exit and the Red Zone.

The mission sounded simple enough. The team of four gun trucks and nineteen men would move from their base compound at BIAP to Abu-Ghraib where they were to pick up four bobtails—the tractor part of a tractor trailer—and escort them some forty miles north to Balad. There they would receive four 40-foot trailers full of weapons and ammunition. The team would then escort the convoy south and west to a compound near Fallujah and turn it all over to the Iraqi Army.

Alex choked on the dust billowing through the open window, and the early-morning sun already burned his skin. The trucks had no armor except for the square metal box for the rear gunner, so they would run with the windows down to keep shards of glass from raining in on their faces and to allow them to fire their weapons out the window to confront whatever threat came at them. He felt the door of the truck with his hand and knew that it would not stop any bullets or shrapnel. He twisted his body to the right so his body armor faced the side of the truck, and he sat on the edge of the seat, hoping to gain some small protection against attack. Sitting wedged against the front seat and sideways like this also enabled him to better cover his sector, which was basically everything to the right of the vehicle. With a glance he saw the Kurdish fighter, who sported the call sign and sideburns of Elvis, do the same in the back seat on the driver’s side.

In the bed of the truck, inside his steel box, another Kurdish fighter, call sign Grim Reaper, charged his Russian PKM machine gun, pulled a black ski mask over his face, and topped it off with a black Kevlar helmet. Alex looked along the rest of the motorcade and noted that the visual effect was very intimidating. It was clear for all to see that this was an extremely dangerous collection of vehicles and men. Since the gun trucks were unarmored and the tractor trailers would make the convoy slow and vulnerable, the men would show off their firepower and try to scare everyone away from the convoy. They called it high profile. As soon as they left the compound, guns would bristle from the windows like a porcupine.

Alex pulled back slightly on the charging handle of his M4 and checked to make sure he had a round seated in the chamber. He checked his Glock 17 pistol by feeling the loaded chamber indicator on the right side of the pistol, then thought better of it and took it out of the holster. He pulled back slightly on the slide and eyeballed the rim of a bullet sitting ready in the chamber and holstered the weapon again.

The T-walls began to crowd close, and the trucks were forced to weave through the serpentine barricades that blocked any car from just zooming past the guards. Just before the exit, the T-walls opened up, and Alex found himself looking into the barrel of a 25-millimeter chain gun mounted on the turret of a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The turret swung around and trained its guns back on the exit. Alex never saw the soldiers manning the big tracked vehicle; they were buttoned up and feeling snug inside with all that armor wrapped around them. He thought, Too bad we’re not doing this in one of those.

The trucks accelerated into the Red Zone, and guns came up to the windows. Alex leaned against the front seat and brought his M4 to his shoulder. Resting the barrel on the door just inside the window, he scanned back and forth.

The radio came alive with the lead truck calling warnings back to the others. Parked vehicle right side . . . three walkers coming our way, left side . . . two men sitting on the curb . . . pile of trash, right side one hundred meters . . . white bongo truck coming up from behind . . . hadj with a cell phone standing by doorway, right side one hundred meters. Pedestrians could be part of an ambush and pull out weapons and start shooting; anything could disguise an improvised explosive device, or IED; vehicles approaching from behind might be car bombs, or VBIEDs; and cell phones were often used in surveillance or to initiate IEDs. Anything that might be a threat was relayed over the radio.

The first leg of the trip they could travel as fast as the trucks and roads would allow. Speed might help disrupt the timing of an IED attack or spoil the aim of someone with an AK-47. They kept about 100 meters distance between each truck and raced along the airport perimeter road for close to a mile before they turned hard right into Shooters’ Alley. They had two choices of roads on first leaving BIAP. Shooters’ Alley was a narrow street through a small town with two-story buildings from which the locals enjoyed taking potshots at passersby. The other route went through what they called the Gauntlet. The team chose the seemingly least dangerous of the two and accelerated into Shooters’ Alley.

From the corners of his eyes, Alex saw everyone covering their assigned sectors. Skeeter, the operations manager, was also sitting sideways in the front passenger seat with his M4 at the ready. Alex stole a glance at the Kurd on the seat next to him. The Kurd had his back to Alex, scanning his sector behind the driver. Dutchy, the team leader and driver, was driving fast and very aggressively. Vehicles peeled out of the way, and people scurried to get off the street.

Alex was in the second truck of the small, fast-moving motorcade. Scanning his sector, he could see the truck in front of his and the one behind. Dog was driving the lead vehicle with three Kurds in the cab. In the truck directly behind Alex, Outlaw was in the driver’s seat with Predator riding shotgun and two more Kurds in the back seat and one in the bed. The last truck was driven by Alien with a full contingent of Kurds.

As they raced through the narrow streets, the Kurds in the first truck leaned way out the windows, brandishing their AK-47s to warn off pedestrians and traffic. Early-morning traffic was light, and they managed to get through the town without major incident. Alex relaxed a little.

OK, that wasn’t too bad, he told himself. Then he noticed a hole about the size of a bullet in the window frame, or B pillar, of the truck. He was certain it had not been there when they started. He shifted his rifle to his left hand and felt the back of his seat with his right until he stuck his finger into the other hole the bullet had made. He never even heard the gunshot that would have hit him in the chest if he’d been sitting back. As it was, for it to impact the doorframe and strike the seat, the round must have been fired from such an angle that it flew within an inch or two of his face without him even noticing. Daaamn! he thought

Alex settled into place and scanned his sector, trying hard to see everything at once. They sped past small buildings, compounds, and rubbled open spaces in the suburban sprawl of Baghdad. Everything appeared dilapidated, with trash and debris and ruins everywhere. People were out and about to get their business done before the oppressive heat arrived later in the day. His eyes darted from one possible threat to another until he started to get a headache. As if on cue, Skeeter said over his shoulder, Don’t try to focus on detail; it’ll give you a headache. Just try to take it all in at once and focus on what seems out of place.

Alex fixed his sights on a car driving toward them from the right. It looked to him like it would intersect with his truck in less than thirty seconds. As he readied himself, he saw the Kurd in the lead truck lean way out the back window, waving his AK-47. Then, bracing himself with his thighs on the window frame, the Kurd leveled the rifle and fired a burst of several 7.62 rounds, stitching a line of holes across the hood of the approaching car. The car slowed, smoke billowing from the hood as Alex and the rest of the gun trucks motored past.

The roads began to narrow and crowd with cars and carts and people, and the convoy slowed. The Kurds were all hanging out of the windows now and brandishing their weapons to scare the people away. The men in the truck beds peered ominously over the steel lips of their baskets, ready to unleash their belt-fed machine guns.

This can’t be real, Alex thought. Mad Max, eat your heart out.

Then they were again free of traffic and racing forward. Skeeter pointed toward their front. Alex quickly took in that the on-ramp to the highway ahead of them was blocked with traffic several cars wide and up to the top of the overpass, where he saw US Army armored vehicles passing. Alex smacked Skeeter on the shoulder and pointed off the shoulder of the road to the hard-packed sand and back up onto the highway past the traffic jam.

Skeeter shook his head. Nope, we stay on the hardball—company orders.

The Kurds came out the windows again as the convoy slowed and the gun trucks were forced to close their gaps almost to bumper to bumper.

Boom! Suddenly Alex was jolted by the loud crack of an AK-47! One of the Kurds in the lead truck hung his entire body down to his thighs out of the window as he held on to the doorjamb with his left hand and brandished an AK-47 with his right. They were side by side with a civilian car. The Kurd fired the assault rifle into the trunk of the car and then swung it up and smashed the driver’s-side window with the barrel and jabbed it at the driver’s face as the truck crunched the side of the car and pushed it aside. The Iraqi jerked his steering wheel to the right and slammed into another car next to him.

Alex started madly checking his sector. Now that they had upset the locals, they probably would